Learn XML In a Weekend

283 Pages·2002·13.984 MB·English

by  Westermann, Erik

Learn XML in a Weekend
ERIK WESTERMANN

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ISBN: 1-59200-010-X
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Printed in the United States of America
02 03 04 05 BH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For the two greatest boys in the world, my sons, Vikranth and Siddharth.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ERIK WESTERMANN is an independent, accomplished developer with more than 10
years of experience in professional programming and design. Erik also enjoys writing
and has written for a number of publications on the Internet and in print. Erik's
professional affiliations include the IEEE Computer Society (http://computer.org), the
Association for Computing Machinery (http://acm.org), and the Worldwide Institute of
Software Architects (http://wwisa.org), where he is a practicing member. Erik has
spoken at conferences including VSLive 2001 in Sydney, Australia. Erik's Web site is
http://www.designs2solutions.com.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost, I'd like to thank Brad Jones for helping me get this project off the
ground; Todd Jensen, acquisitions editor, for putting up with my "short" e-mails; Amy
Pettinella, my project editor, for overseeing the project from (almost) the beginning;
and Michelle Jones, technical editor, for her comments and suggestions.
I would also like to thank Altova, the producers of XML Spy, for the copy of XML Spy,
and Jon Bachman at eXcelon for helping to get a copy of eXcelon Stylus Studio for
the readers of this book.
I'd like to thank Tom Archer for his support throughout the project, and for helping me
get my writing career started in the first place. I could not have done it without you.
Thanks, Tom!
I'd also like to thank my sons, Vikranth and Siddharth, for understanding when I was
busy, and for the time they gave up spending with me so that I could produce this
book for you. I'd also like to thank my wife, Shanthi, for her ceaseless support in all of
my endeavors.
Foreword
The first time I met Erik was while running the popular CodeGuru Web site a few
years ago, where he was responsible for writing the book reviews. While Erik's
reviews had proven to be one of the most popular aspects of the site, we never had a
system in place that would allow us to easily provide a means for the user to read
archived reviews. Obviously, we could have simply organized the reviews much like
we did the code articles, but we also wanted a means by which reviews could be
searched using criteria such as rating, publisher, author, and title.
The solution Erik came up with was both elegant and functional. By combining the
powers of ASP (Active Server Pages), XML, and XSL, in a weekend he wrote the
foundations for the book review archive section that is still in use today at CodeGuru,
as well as many other popular Web sites. His application design was so flexible that
his work was later expanded to work with archived newsletters and many other
document types.
Okay, so we know that Erik is great with XML, but will reading this book make you as
productive as he is? I'll admit that when I was approached about writing this
foreword, I was a bit wary that any reasonable amount of XML could be learned in a
single weekend. I told Erik that I would need to read the entire book to make sure my
name would be associated with something that I believe in. Well, two days later, not
only was I surprised that the book does indeed deliver on its promises, but I actually
learned several new bits of information about XML despite having used it for over two
years now!
If you're new to XML and have no time to waste on theoretical discussions, this book
is a goldmine of information. By the end of Saturday afternoon's lesson, many XML
documents that you may have seen but never quite understood will begin to make
sense. By the end of Saturday afternoon's lesson, you will understand basic XML
constructs such as elements and attributes, you will have worked with XML
namespaces and fully comprehend how to use them properly, and you'll understand
how XML fits into practical applications. By Sunday evening, you will have done
everything from working with document models and DTDs, to creating and interfacing
your own XML documents with style sheets (both CSS and XSL), to programmatically
accessing XML documents from your applications using the XML DOM.
The key is that Erik takes a pragmatic approach, helping you become productive
quickly while taking the time to explain important details along the way. I found the
discussions on character sets, character encoding, and schemas particularly
interesting because they were so detailed, yet so easy to read and understand.
That's unique in books like this. Erik enjoys teaching others, and his experience
shines though on every page. The numerous sample XML documents throughout the
book make it an interesting read, but Erik goes beyond that and includes code for
Web pages and applications using programming languages like VBScript, JavaScript,
and C#. Also, the samples are interesting even if you're not a programmer, because
they provide you with another perspective on how developers work with XML.
Simply put, the clear explanations, real-world examples, and a focus on relevant
technologies make this book an essential addition to your bookshelf if you're serious
about XML.
Tom Archer
http://www.theCodeChannel.com
July 2002
Introduction
Welcome to Learn XML In a Weekend. This book contains seven lessons and other
resources that are focused on only one thing: getting you up to speed with XML, its
related technologies, and its latest developments. The lessons span a weekend,
beginning on Friday evening and ending on Sunday evening. Yes, you can learn
XML in a weekend!
As you look at all of the other XML books that line the shelves, you might ask,
"What's so special about this book?" This book is different from the rest of the pack
because not only does it explain what XML is and how to use it, but it presents
relevant, practical, and real-world uses of XML. While a lot of books focus on core
XML (its syntax, DTDs, and so on), which is very useful information, they often
assume that you have the expertise to integrate XML into your organization's
operations.
This book focuses on relevant XML technologies like XPath, XSD, DTD, and CSS,
and explains why other technologies, like XDR, may not be important in certain
scenarios. This book also takes a practical approach to working with XML. After
showing you the core syntax and other rules, I'll show you how to work with XML
using two of the best XML editors on the market today: eXcelon's Stylus Studio and
Altova's XML Spy. There's not much point in writing XML documents, schemas, and
transformations by hand if XML editors can generate a lot of the XML for you!
I'll also discuss how to use XML in Internet Explorer, Microsoft Active Server Pages,
and Microsoft's latest offerings: the .NET Framework and the Visual C# .NET
programming language.
This book succinctly describes XML and its related technologies, focusing only on
what's relevant in today's rapidly changing marketplace. I'll help you make choices
that can mean the difference between a successful solution and one that fails
because it uses irrelevant, incompatible, or outdated standards. Skim through the
book now and take a look through Saturday afternoon's lesson, which describes how
to create XML documents. That single lesson covers everything you need to know,
from basic syntax to creating XML documents using different languages (important in
today's global marketplace). By the end of that lesson alone, you'll already
understand terms like entity reference, character sets, and namespaces.
How This Book Is Organized
This book is organized into seven lessons that span a weekend, beginning on Friday
evening and ending on Sunday evening. By Monday morning, you'll be right up to
speed with XML and its related technologies. If you're like me and cannot devote an
entire weekend to reading a book because of other commitments, feel free to read
this book whenever you like.
Here's an overview of each lesson:
Friday Evening focuses on introducing XML: what it is, why it's useful, and how
people use it.
Saturday Morning is a slightly longer lesson that focuses on using XML in Internet
Explorer with HTML and XSL, and using XML with Microsoft's Active Server Pages.
This lesson gives you an overview of what you can do with XML. Don't worry if you're
not a programmer or don't understand the programming language that's used in the
lesson. The idea is to expose you to these technologies so that you'll gain a better
understanding of how others use XML.
Saturday Afternoon is a slightly longer lesson, focusing on how to write XML
documents by following the rules that XML imposes. This lesson covers basic
document structure, working with attributes, comments, and CDATA sections. The
lesson also covers character encoding, which allows international users to read your
XML documents, and namespaces, a feature that makes your XML documents more
useful by allowing you to share them with others.
Saturday Evening is one of the longest lessons in the book, focusing on document
modeling using DTD and XSD. I suggest that you start reading this chapter as soon
as you can after you complete Saturday afternoon's lesson so that you can complete
it in one evening.
Sunday Morning focuses on using XML Spy and Stylus Studio to create and work
with XML solutions. The lesson also covers XSL debugging using Stylus Studio,
which can save you hours of frustration when your XSL code doesn't work as you
expect it should. This lesson also describes Microsoft XML Core Services, how to
determine what version is installed on your system, and how to get the latest
updates.
Sunday Afternoon is a longer lesson, so I recommend you try to start it as soon as
possible after completing the previous lesson. This lesson focuses on presenting
data on the Web using presentation technologies like CSS and XSL. It examines how
to repurpose an XML document using XSL that you create using Stylus Studio's
graphical XSL editor.
Sunday Evening shows you how to use XML with Internet Explorer's Data Source
Object (DSO), the XML Document Object Model (XML DOM), and Microsoft's .NET
Framework. The DSO produces impressive results, like support for paging through
long sets of data without any programming. The XML DOM is useful for creating and
manipulating an XML document programmatically (via an application's code), and the
Microsoft .NET Framework offers support for XML throughout.
Appendix A provides an HTML and XPath reference to help you become more
productive. This appendix includes examples and screen shots.
Appendix B presents the W3C XML 1.0 Specification. This is a shorter specification
than the one published by the W3C and uses examples throughout.
Appendix C is a list of Web resources.
The Glossary is a comprehensive listing of terms, along with their definitions. Most
terms are used in the book, but there are some additional terms that you'll come
across as you work with XML but do not appear in the book.
Conventions Used in This Book
This book uses a number of conventions that make it easier to read:
Note Notes provide additional information.
Tip Tips highlight information that appears in the surrounding text.
Code that appears within the body of a paragraph is shown in another font to make it
stand out from the rest of the surrounding text.
Code listings appear in another font, sometimes including bold lines to highlight
certain parts of the listing. The following is an example of a listing that contains bold
text:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<xs:complexType name="license_t">
<xs:simpleContent>
<xs:extension base="xs:string">
<xs:attribute name="licenseNumber" type="xs:string"/>
<xs:attribute name="ownerName" type="xs:string"/>
References
The following is a list of materials I used to prepare this book:
W3C, Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Second Edition), World Wide Web
Consortium, 2000, http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml
W3C, XML Path Language (XPath) Version 1.0, World Wide Web Consortium, 1999,
http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath
W3C, XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 1.0, World Wide Web Consortium, 1999,
http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt
W3C, Cascading Style Sheets, level 1, World Wide Web Consortium, 1996,
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS1
Nikola Ozu et al, Professional XML, Wrox Press, 2001
Khun Yee Fung, XSLT: Working with XML and HTML, Addison Wesley, 2000
The Unicode Consortium, UNICODE STANDARD VERSION 3.0, 2000
Friday Evening: Introducing XML
Good evening! Tonight you begin learning how people use XML in real-world
scenarios. This evening introduces you to what XML is, how to create XML
documents and play by XML's rules, the benefits of using XML, and how XML relates
to HTML. The remainder of the evening discusses the typical life cycle of an XML
document, describes how others make XML work for them, and covers the basics of
the types of XML documents you'll probably encounter.
What Is XML?
XML stands for extensible markup language, a syntax that describes how to add
structure to data. A markup language is a specification that adds new information to
existing information while keeping the two sets of information separate. If it were as
simple as that, I could describe XML to you in just a few pages.
However, XML is more complicated than that. It's a simple syntax that describes
information, a set of technologies that allows you to format and filter information
independently of how that information is represented, and the embodiment of an idea
that reduces data to its purest form, devoid of formatting and other irrelevant aspects,
to attain a very high level of usefulness and flexibility.
Oddly enough, XML is not a markup language. Instead, it defines a set of rules for
creating markup languages. There are many types of markup languages, the most
popular of which is HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), the publishing language of
the Internet. HTML combines formatting information with a Web page's content so
that you see the page in the way the designer intended for you to see it.
The two most important elements that make HTML work are the HTML itself and
software that's capable of interpreting HTML. When you view a Web page, your
browser retrieves the page, interprets the HTML, and displays the resulting document
on your screen. The same two elements, XML itself and software that's capable of
interpreting XML, are needed with XML.
Assume that you're working with a file that looks like this:
Learn XML In A Weekend, Erik Westermann, 159200010X
This file describes information about a book using three fields: the title, author, and
ISBN (a number that uniquely identifies a book). While it's clear to you and me that
Learn XML In A Weekend represents the title of a book, a computer would have a
tough time figuring out that
• There are three fields in the file (separated by commas).
• Each field represents an individual piece of data.
XML enables you to add structure to the data. Here's the same file marked up with
XML:
<books>
<book>
<title>Learn XML In A Weekend</title>
<author>Erik Westermann</author>
<isbn>159200010X</isbn>
</book>
</books>
It's now apparent, both to us and to software that's capable of interpreting XML, that
the file contains information about a collection of books (there's only one book in this
collection) broken into three fields: title, author, and ISBN. For software to be able to
interpret the XML, the sample follows certain rules:
• Text inside the angle brackets (< and >) represents a markup element.
• Text outside of the angle brackets is data.
• The beginning of a unit of data has a start tag prefix.
• The end of a unit of data is marked with an end tag. This is almost identical to
a start tag, except that it begins with a slash (/).
For example, <title> is a start tag, Learn XML In A Weekend represents a unit of
data, and </title> is an end tag. XML defines only the syntax—the rules—and leaves
it to you to decide how you structure it and what data you store in it.
XML documents reside in files that you can create with an editor like Windows
Notepad, making XML very accessible. Specialized editors are available to help you
manage XML documents and ensure that you follow the rules of the XML
specification. I'll cover two such editors later in this book.
Note Windows Notepad is a simple text editor that comes with Windows. You can
start Notepad by clicking Start, Run, and then typing notepad.
It is important to understand that XML is an enabling technology, which is analogous
to any written or spoken language. A language doesn't communicate for us. We're
able to communicate because we use language.
Just as you play a role in reading the words on this page (the words are meaningless,
unless someone reads them), XML becomes useful only in the context of a system
that's able to interpret it. Unlike written and spoken languages, you're not likely to
directly read or write XML. People rarely read XML documents—in most cases,
software creates an XML file and then other software uses it without anyone actually
viewing the XML document itself. However, you still need to understand what XML is
and how to use it to your advantage.
There are three important characteristics of XML that make it useful in a variety of
systems and solutions:
• XML is extensible.
• XML separates data from presentation.
• XML is a widely accepted public standard.
XML Is Extensible
Think of XML like this: one syntax, many languages.
XML describes the basic syntax—the basic format—and rules that XML documents
must follow. Unlike markup languages like HTML, which has a predefined set of tags
(items with the angle brackets, as in the previous sample), XML doesn't put any
limitations on which tags you can use or create. For example, there isn't any reason
you couldn't rename the <book> tag to <manuscript> or <record>.
XML essentially allows you to create your own language, or vocabulary, that suits
your application. The XML standard (described shortly) describes how to create tags
and structure an XML document, creating a framework. As long as you stay within
the framework, you're free to define tags that suit your data or application.
XML Separates Data from Presentation
Take a close look at the page layout of this book—it contains several types of
headings and other formatting elements. The information on this page wouldn't
change if you changed its format, though. If you remove the headings, italic
characters, and other formatting, you'll be left with the essence of this book—the
information that it contains, or its content.
XML allows you to store content with regard to how it will be presented—whether in
print, on a computer screen, on a cellular phone's tiny display screen, or even read
aloud by speech software. When you want to present an XML document, you'll often
use another XML vocabulary (set of XML tags) to describe the presentation. Also,
you'll use other software to perform the transformation from XML into the format you
want to present the content in, as shown in Figure 1.1.